


Anabasis

by x_los



Category: Blake's 7
Genre: Afterlife, F/M, M/M, Post Gauda Prime
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-13
Updated: 2015-06-13
Packaged: 2018-04-04 03:58:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,401
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4124829
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/x_los/pseuds/x_los
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Kerr Avon walked through hell. It was, in large part, much as he'd expected."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Anabasis

Kerr Avon walked through hell. It was, in large part, much as he'd expected. He recognized it as one of his grandmother's hells. He could hear her voice describing it, the way she had cracked out words with sharp decision, like the click of her fast-moving chess pieces on a hard board or the clink and brisk swish of her spoon in her tea as she stirred in the jam. "Chill. Not cold. A rainy Thursday afternoon. Forever. But," a smile in her voice, "I shouldn't spoil it for you."

She'd died when he was nine, and Avon, who had loved her, had thought for the first time "this isn't a world that likes me.”

It was a dark wood, a forest of dead trees, gray and leafless. In some of the trees further off, gray shapes swung in a breeze he couldn't feel. Bodies, hanging. But he didn't go any closer to check. He kept to the path and didn't turn when he heard voices.

He was walking towards a woman. Anna Grant's body was obscured by shadows. She might have been unclothed, but he didn't particularly care, and it was impossible to tell, anyway. Perhaps she wore the chains she'd forged in life, as the old story went. Anna had walked in shadows and now they walked in her, pouring out of her skin and swirling around her, tripping her up, a barrier keeping her from touching anything real. As real as anything was, here.

"Well?" he asked her.

"I'm your psychopomp," she told him, eschewing greetings.

"You certainly were the former."

"And pompous, on my better days. I'm here to take you through the woods."

"Why should I go anywhere with you?"

She shrugged, and a shadow slipped over her shoulder, and another spilled out of her nostrils, and it was obscene and difficult to look at, for all she was still beautiful--perhaps _because_ she was.

"You can stay here. Or you can walk."

"What exactly is waiting for me, if I go?"

"Nothing, exactly. A chance. Someone decided to offer you one. Just to see him, I think, and say a handful of words. Will you take a terrible journey for that?"

He started to laugh, the sound flat and crushed in the wood. But it hadn’t been a nice laugh to start with.

She shrugged. "So you will. And you already have. There are no terrors left for you, now that the worst has come."

Avon looked back over his grandmother's hell, and wondered if anyone he had known or had loved was swinging with grotesque, gentle regularity. Here, forever.

"If you leave the path," Anna said, "then I can’t ever take you from this place..."

"I know," Avon said. "Go to hell, Anna."

They began to walk.

"The lady--don't guess her name, don't say one of her many, don't even think it, Avon. She is terrible, and her interest in you would be no protection. She is darkness and she is the worst part of love. She hears everything no one says. She was a girl, once, and she knows what it is to come under a love that traps you, when you want to be your own. She felt a single flicker of pity for you--she was bored, Avon, it was only that. And so we are going to walk and give you your last words, if you're strong enough. There are things she can do to you, even here. Even now. Things you can’t imagine. Do you understand? _Think her name and you’re lost_."

"I understand. And you?"

“I'm here because I was suited to the work, and I felt a little bad about you, Kerr."

"Did you love me, then? At all?" It didn't matter now. Did he ask it to soothe his own pride, to pass the time, because the darkness parted for an instant and a shadow swirled out of her belly and twisted and dove back into flesh he'd once held? He wasn’t sure.

"No. I never had anything like that to give. But still, I did feel a little bad about you--I thought your love was a nice thing, really, and that it was a shame I didn't know what to do with it, and couldn't make anything like it myself. Once my father gave me a china horse and I didn't know where to put it. I wasn't the sort of child you gave a thing like that to. It sat on my shelf full of gray boxes of equipment and looked stupid, and one day it fell off, I broke it. I almost cried, and I didn't understand why. This is the first true thing I've ever told you."

"You had a brother. I’ve met him.”

"The Federation had a rebel prisoner, and brainwashing equipment. You think the man you’re doing this for liked touching little boys?" She shook her head, tripped on nothing, steadied herself. "He liked things with more resistance, and he wanted so much to make those things like him in return. I also took an interest in you, when you disappeared. A little one, from time to time. People don’t usually escape. I almost wished you well."

"I can barely remember what it was to love you.” What did we say? He wondered. What was she like? He tried to think of any of it, and couldn’t gain purchase on a the particulars.

“That’s in part the nature of this place. Time moves at an angle here, and memory works on its own terms, pulling back like a tide and going where you can't, or consuming you. It commands _you_ , now; it’s not your imperfect tool. It makes sense to me––that was the nature of my work.” She darted ahead of him and turned a corner. He ran after her, scared to lose sight of her, and nearly skidded off the path. She didn’t look back, didn’t wait for him. Just walked on at her own pace.

“There’s nothing to remember, Avon,” she continued. “I was a situation more than a person, for you. I wasn't ever much of a person, for anyone. I was too good at being what I was. I tried to work out what you wanted to hear, and I said it, and you were clever and eager to love, and you strung together a person out of all of it, an idea of a woman named Anna Grant. You could have seen the inconsistencies, if you'd had a friend to talk about me to, but you never did. You were a good game, for me. That is what you were. And I'm sorry, in a way, to have broken and lost some of your pieces."

The wood came to an end, and they were in a place with a glass roof. Frozen bits of bodies pierced it, though the seal was perfect. On the other side of the clouded glass, Avon could see light and the pink warmth of living flesh. They came upon a hand he knew, draping down, open, and near it a few locks of curled brown hair. Both belonged to the same body, half-caught in the glass above.

"She's like this because she's mostly happy," Anna told him. "She believed in almost everything she did."

“But not all.”

“No. I expect you know that.”

"She can't move," Avon swallowed. "She can't--"

"No. But that's her own guilt. Most of her feels the sunlight, and she is not alone. She is looking up at God, I think." Anna used the word as a shorthand for Everything, and he understood what she meant by it.

Avon touched the cold hand, and let it go again. They walked on, and he didn't look back.

"We have to take this path.” Anna gestured at a rocky, unpleasant-looking fork in the road. "It's the right one for you."

They crawled over the jagged rocks, and Avon felt exhausted, beyond exhausted. "You wouldn't have taken the other ways, the low ways," Anna said, walking before him, scaling purposeless banks of twisted metal easily because they weren't hers. When she tripped it was on her own shadows, and it twisted her limbs at impossible angles. He didn't know if she felt it. "You couldn't have accepted the low ways––they wouldn't have brought you to him. You'd have walked forever and never moved."

"Surely everything that's real meant more than _this_ ," Avon said. "Surely I've already been on all my journeys, made my choices––”

"Perhaps. Some people falter, here. Look how far on it goes, Avon. Further than miles could reach. Look how steep."

Avon shook his head. "It doesn't matter. I don’t have anything better to do.”

"You might collapse. You might rest."

"Are you trying to help me or keep me from the end? Fueled by a final, petty hate, for someone you don't even care about, Anna?” It wasn't even her name, but that didn't matter either.

"I'm only telling you what the rocks are for, Avon. You like to know things. You always did. Did it help?"

"Don't you know?”

"No, I don't--I don't know whether any of that information consoled you, or helped you help yourself, or him, really. But I'm not angry that you shot me--that was the consequence of my failure. And you don't care that you shot me, either, anymore. But you care about having done it to him. You don't think it's a good death."

He laughed as he’d laughed in the woods, but the sound was shorter and sadder. "How could it be?"

"Some men die small, and for nothing. He died walking towards you, and in your arms. Having lived for something, and having made you know it. It's a rare thing, a fine thing. Every difference between his death and mine makes his grand and sweet, and mine nothing. Rest here, rest while we talk."

"No. Keep going, Anna."

"Good. You never could be reconciled, or consoled. No, I don’t think having all the answers did help you, in the end. I don’t think you found any consolation in it. Tragedy is from the Greek, Avon."

"I know." He had forgotten.

"A character is defined by his tragic flaw. This flaw might be an error of judgment. A result of ignorance. A flaw in his character. A sin. It prompts a chain of actions that results in the destruction of his world. And often that of everyone his life has touched."

"I know." He had forgotten.

"What's yours, Avon? What was his? You know, but you've forgotten what it means. Tragedy is the inversion of a farce. One thing to another, building. He couldn't have done it alone. He needed you to die."

"I know.” _That_ he hadn’t forgotten.

"What use is having all the answers, if you never remember them in the right season? Have you noticed how hard it is to cry here?” Anna asked, watching him. “I haven't, but people tell me. They say they hate that this place takes that from them."

"I've never been much for crying."

"You never needed tears for grief. Why did you love him?"

"Why do you want to know?"

"To pass the lack of time," she said, and he laughed. She'd always been clever. That was, he supposed, how she'd beaten him--by being clever in a way he had never been. "Give me the reasons, the qualities, the shared memories," she persisted. "Do you think they'll be enough to last here? How long will you remember that love? How long will you _feel_ it?"

"It will be the last thing to go, I suppose. And I have always been stubborn. But we go about it very differently, you and I. I find despair suited to the memory of fine things. And he was a fine thing, if you have to hear me say it. Do you want an inventory? The tone of his voice when he was angry. The way he was good at keeping secrets, but I could always tell when he was lying. The span of his hands. How much he liked beautiful things, when he let himself pay attention. The way I never knew exactly what he was going to say. How clever he could be. The particular nuance of his opinion of some shopkeeper we met for a moment. The weighty things one should love someone for. And I suppose I did. I think I'll remember him all the better, for being here. No. I don't fear this place at all, for that."

The ground was smooth and slick with blood. She walked above it like Christ and he slipped like a clown and had to get down on his hands and knees and work and push and slide to inch across it. Had to grit his teeth and want it. Covered in it stiff and crackling, crawling on his belly, across endless, endless time.

I look a fool, he thought.

"You always have," she said, because nothing was private here.

"Why test me like this when it's nothing to what I've done? When I'm not going to stop? A punishment I could understand. But this?"

"You're your own punishment, Avon. You always have been. And for the rest? Many people say that. Many people find the execution more difficult than the sentiment. But you're right. It’s nothing, for you. You’re stronger than I thought you’d be.” She laughed herself, and it was the first time he’d heart her real laugh—sharp and short and final. “I knew a lot about you, and I don’t think I ever knew you at all. Any more than you knew me. We're here now. Goodbye, Avon."

She was gone and he didn't know if she'd been a good guide or a hindrance. But that was Anna's whole presence in his life, and with a dull, persistent hunger, he wanted to reach the end of the road too much to care.

Around a bend and he was there.

"Where am I?" Blake asked, looking irritable, standing at a crossroads. "Am I coming or going?"

Avon was covered in stiff blood and smelt like a charnel house and looked like, well. Hell. He wondered if Blake _was_ staying, when he'd been a good man, if often not a nice one. But perhaps that was what it was to be good--to never be satisfied, to never be able to close your eyes to suffering. Blake might have been kinder in a kinder world. Or perhaps justice and kindness were in some measure opposed--standing up and lying back. Or perhaps they were the same thing. These were Blake's demons, not his.

"Blake, there isn't time. I need to make you understand––“

"That gate--" Blake turned to stare at it. "There, up the path. It's _pulling_ at me."

Avon looked up at the gate, made of slick-polished animal horn, twisting and branching, forked and vital, crawling and curling, pitch-black at its aperture, He felt a genuine terror he'd not known since he'd been a living man. Not yet, not now before he was through--and yet Blake should be on the other side, and had to go.

Avon pulled Blake back to look at him. Blake felt chill. Not cold. Real.

"You were right to care about people, right to try and force me to act as though I did."

"You _did_ care," Blake insisted, "you always cared," and Avon (yes, and no) pushed on.

"I wish I had lived up to your trust. I wish I'd been worthy of the love I bore you--for my sake, yes, but mostly for yours. I wish I'd been good enough, and I’m sorry I wasn't. I wish you hadn't been so _stupid_ , but no, no, it was _me_ , it was just as much my fault. How can this be hell, when I can think of you forever, when, even if the memory goes, I can still dimly _know_ you existed, and that I knew you, and that you made me into something without trying, and that you _loved_ me? I never quite expected you to. It seemed too much to ask. But you did, didn't you? I know you did, now. What can I say that will give you any happiness? Here, at the end, I will do anything for you. It was always that way."

"If you love me," Blake gave the ultimatum like he was ordering coffee, and Avon laughed at how himself Blake was, "then come with me."

Avon squeezed his hand. "I can't, Blake. That gate doesn't want me."

"Then it doesn't want me, does it, Avon? Better just to do it."

"We might have moments, only moments against the rest of time--we should spend them saying goodbye. What do you want? What can I say?"

"What I want is this." Blake squeezed his hand back and marched them to the gate, gathering Avon to him and shoving them through, together.

Things that don't have bodies can't hurt, but Avon nonetheless thought of that darkness as a physical resistance. It felt like pushing into a pool of thick oil, of treacle, trying to melt through the floor, battering your body against a wall. His hand almost slipped from Blake's, but he clawed his nails in deep and Blake gripped him tighter. They could not see in the blackness, and winds buffeted them. It wasn't passing through a veil--they had to walk like this. Walk on and on, Avon staggering in front, now. Light from somewhere. Avon knew it would go badly if he looked back. Blake was with him, had just fallen a step behind. Blake's hand was in his, it wasn't some replacement, though it occasionally felt skeletal, like something slick and strange, like a shadow or a shade. He didn't call Blake's name to check it was him, and he didn't look back. He walked. Kept walking. Despair set in, deeper than he'd ever known it, and he gasped and almost dropped Blake's hand, but then gathered it (it felt insubstantial) tighter to him. He paid despair no mind. The fatal mistake of his life had been distrust, and looking back. He wouldn't let that mistake take his death as well.

Then they were out, some place greener than he'd ever seen. It was the morning, it was English summer as it was in the old poems, as he'd never known it. "We're home," he said, and he didn't look back. He opened his eyes.

Metal walls. A medical bay. Across from him, Blake, bullet wounds in his stomach. A nurse came in to check on Avon, having been alerted to his change of status by monitoring equipment.

He didn't know if he was still in hell. It took him a while to believe he wasn't. Blake's people came in to explain things, and he nodded, mostly silent. "A mistake," he repeated. "A misunderstanding." He learned his people were fine; Blake’s people were on the move. All of them together here, traveling on this lesser journey. They hadn’t known if either of them would make it, but now Avon was back among the living and Blake seemed liable to come 'round.

Two days later, Blake woke. Avon didn't need alerted by the machines, because he'd stayed, watching him.

"That was stupid," Avon said when Blake woke up.

"Which of us?" Blake asked.

"Both."

"I had a strange dream," Blake said.

Avon nodded. "It will fade, I think." People, he thought, shouldn't remember much of that sort of thing. It'd be difficult to bear.

Blake shook his head. "I remember some of it. I remember what you did."

"I shot you," Avon pointed out, not mentioning that it was Blake who’d saved them, dragging them through the gate. All he’d done was keep going in the direction Blake had pointed them.

"Yes. And all the rest. Before and after."

"Well," Avon smiled ruefully, "it was the least I could do."

"It wasn't, Avon. You always had the option of doing the least you could do, and you rarely took it." There was a moment of silence before Blake continued. "It's one of the reasons I love you, actually."

"I don't deserve it," Avon said, matter-of-factly. "But tell me the rest anyway."

“Oh, I think otherwise. How much time do you have?"

"Well," Avon drawled, "for _you_ \--"  

**Author's Note:**

> beta'd by aralias


End file.
